{"id":7366,"date":"2026-01-11T23:32:44","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T07:32:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/troubadourworks.com\/tiandi\/meotw\/?p=7366"},"modified":"2026-02-05T03:53:40","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T11:53:40","slug":"biyao","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/troubadourworks.com\/tiandi\/meotw\/2026\/01\/11\/biyao\/","title":{"rendered":"b\u00ecy\u00e0o"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\t\t\tb\u00ecy\u00e0o<\/span>\n\t\t\t(b\u00ec\u00b7y\u00e0o\n\t\t\tcertainly \u00b7 {[being] needed; required; essential} [\u2192 [need | necessary; indispensable]]<\/span>\n\t\t\t\u5fc5\u8981)<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t \ud83d\udc48\ud83c\udffc Tap\/click to show\/hide the \u201cflashcard\u201d<\/span>\n<\/h3>\n\n

As part of a series of posts about some common myths<\/a> about Chinese characters, this post discusses the Indispensability Myth.<\/strong> So, this week\u2019s MEotW is \u201cb\u00ecy\u00e0o<\/i><\/span>\n\t\t\t(b\u00ec\u00b7y\u00e0o\n\t\t\tcertainly \u00b7 {[being] needed; required; essential} [\u2192 [need | necessary; indispensable]]<\/span>\n\t\t\t\u5fc5\u8981)<\/span>\u201d,<\/i> which can effectively mean \u201cindispensable\u201d.<\/p>\n

Can Chinese Characters Be Replaced?<\/h4>\n

\"\u6c49\u5b57<\/p>\n

In the book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy<\/i><\/a>, linguist and sinologist John DeFrancis<\/a> introduces the chapter entitled \u201cThe Indispensability Myth\u201d with the following:<\/p>\n

\nThe belief that Chinese characters are indispensable exists on several levels that range from the most shallow mindlessness to the most serious thoughtfulness. As usual, much of the mythology is based on a confusion of terms and on mixing up speech and writing. In its most general form the Indispensability Myth holds that Chinese cannot be written in an alphabetic script. This seemingly straightforward statement turns out on closer examination to involve a great deal of ambiguity centering on the meaning of the two terms \u201cChinese\u201d and \u201ccannot.\u201d As I have stressed repeatedly in the previous chapters, the term \u201cChinese\u201d covers a wide range of meanings. The indispensability thesis needs to be tested against each of them.<\/p>\n

\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026scientific linguists have repeatedly demonstrated in actual practice the validity of their thesis that the speech of any individual can be written in an alphabetic script. The overall approach in such an undertaking is the same for all forms of speech in that it involves direct observation and analysis. The specific solutions vary according to the linguistic details (phonemic, morphemic, lexical, syntactical, and so forth) for each form of speech. Any student of linguistics with a modicum of competence can create an alphabetic system of writing for any form of speech in the world. To deny this elementary truth in general or in specific application to Chinese is to reject science and embrace mythology.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

DeFrancis goes on to discuss different approaches that have been tried to create alphabetic writing systems for the languages spoken in China. Regarding the most successful approach so far, he writes:<\/p>\n

\nThe third solution was adopted in the Latinization movement of the thirties and forties, and by Protestant missionaries and Chinese reformers earlier, to create as many separate schemes of romanization as there are instances of mutually unintelligible forms of speech. The basis for this approach was largely the practical one of creating as simple a system as possible for a given group of speakers in order to facilitate their acquisition of literacy. There was never an overall attempt to determine the exact number of schemes that should be created or to relate the schemes to each other as part of an integrated plan of writing reform. The more or less ad hoc empirical approach is therefore all the more impressive with respect to the results that were actually achieved. Publication in various alphabetic schemes in the century from the initiation of missionary work to the cessation of Latinization activities in the 1940s is significant both for its quantity and for its quality since it includes such diverse items as the Bible, Lewis Carroll\u2019s Through the Looking-glass,<\/i> Tolstoi\u2019s \u201cThe Prisoner of the Caucasus,\u201d Pushkin\u2019s poems, Lu Xun\u2019s \u201cDiary of a Madman\u201d and \u201cStory of Ah Q,\u201d the Soviet Constitution, communist land laws, miscellaneous biographies of Westerners, newpapers and journals, and much additional literature. All this provides practical proof of the theoretical truth that the alleged impossibility of using an alphabetic script in place of Chinese characters to represent spoken Chinese is a bit of unmitigated nonsense. It also provides support for the theoretical assumption that there is in fact no significant limit to the subject matter that can be written in Pinyinized versions of the various regionalects [(the mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese)].\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As the article \u201cP\u012bny\u012bn<\/i> Is a Good, Workable Writing System on Its Own<\/a>\u201d says:<\/p>\n

\nP\u012bny\u012bn can indeed be used to write anything<\/strong> that can be spoken in Modern Standard Mandarin, from the simplest expressions to the most advanced, complex, and deeply meaningful expressions<\/em>, so it qualifies as a full writing system<\/a> in that fundamental sense as well\u2014P\u012bny\u012bn<\/i> is indeed \u201ca method of representing the sounds of a language by written or printed symbols\u201d.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Indeed, P\u012bny\u012bn<\/i><\/span>\n\t\t\t(P\u012bn\u00b7y\u012bn\n\t\t\t{Piecing Together of} \u00b7 Sounds \u2192<\/span> [Pinyin]<\/span>\n\t\t\t\u62fc\u97f3)<\/span> can be used to represent the key, indispensable factor<\/em> in communication on spiritual matters, that Mandarin field language learners should be striving for. This key, indispensable factor is explained to us in the Bible itself at 1 Corinthians 14:8\u201311<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\nFor if the trumpet sounds an indistinct call, who will get ready for battle? In the same way, unless you with the tongue use speech that is easily understood, how will anyone know what is being said? You will, in fact, be speaking into the air. It may be that there are many kinds of speech in the world, and yet no kind is without meaning. For if I do not understand the sense of the speech, I will be a foreigner to the one speaking, and the one speaking will be a foreigner to me.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, while traditional worldly human Mandarin teachers generally say that characters are indispensable, and that extensive knowledge of characters is thus the goal that Mandarin learners should strive for, the Bible itself tells us that the actual key, indispensable factor required for communication on spiritual matters is \u201cspeech that is easily understood\u201d.<\/strong><\/em> In that regard, we should note that P\u012bny\u012bn<\/span>\n\t\t\t(P\u012bn\u00b7y\u012bn\n\t\t\t{Piecing Together of} \u00b7 Sounds \u2192<\/span> [Pinyin]<\/span>\n\t\t\t\u62fc\u97f3)<\/span> can simply and directly represent any and all understandable modern Mandarin speech, no characters required.<\/em> Besides \u201cspeech that is easily understood\u201d, everything else language-related is of lesser or even little importance, and perhaps even to be actively avoided,<\/em> in our vital work of praising Jehovah and trying to help save lives in the Mandarin field. We should keep this principle in mind as we consider what DeFrancis calls the Speakability Test, and what he goes on to say about various kinds of traditional Chinese writings.<\/p>\n

The Speakability Test<\/h4>\n

What is the Speakability Test? Note how DeFrancis tells us what he means by that:<\/p>\n

\nThe preceding discussion of the Indispensability Myth has been based on a definition of \u201cChinese\u201d that is limited to its spoken manifestation. Strictly speaking, this is the only acceptable definition of the term. Yet this limitation is very often ignored\u2014sometimes deliberately, sometimes out of sheer ignorance in muddling speech and writing. A popular formulation of the Indispensability Myth holds that because homonyms are so numerous in \u201cChinese,\u201d characters must be used to avoid the unsupportable ambiguity that would result from writing alphabetically. This view has been advanced in a typically exaggerated form by writers.<\/p>\n

\u2026<\/p>\n

Now we are asked to consider quite a different question based on some quite different and not entirely clear definitions of \u201cChinese.\u201d The term is variously used to refer to such concepts as Chinese characters, Chinese characters in a dictionary, written Chinese, the Chinese language written in characters, perhaps even spoken Chinese written in characters. Our new question is: Can \u201cChinese\u201d as thus loosely defined be written in an alphabetic script? One possible answer to this question is that it should never have been asked in the first place. \u201cChinese,\u201d we might insist, must mean spoken Chinese. Whether it has been traditionally written in Chinese characters, cuneiform symbols, hieroglyphics, or anything else is totally irrelevant to the question [of] whether Chinese (that is, current spoken Chinese) can be written in an alphabetic script.<\/p>\n

However much we might like to adopt this entirely justifiable stand, the need to confront the Indispensability Myth in its various forms requires further discussion of the issues. Actually the answer to the new question, or rather to the new series of questions, is quite simple. It is based on the eminently practical approach of asking another, quite simple question: Can the \u201cChinese\u201d you have in mind be understood if spoken aloud? If the answer is yes, then this Chinese can be Pinyinized. If the answer is no, then it cannot. We can test this approach, which consists of what might be called the Speakability Test, by applying it to various kinds of Chinese.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Homophones and Homographs<\/h4>\n

Continuing on, DeFrancis says:<\/p>\n

\nThose who think of \u201cChinese\u201d in terms of Chinese characters often invoke such imaginary problems as the ninety words pronounced li<\/i> (without tone indication) or the more modest thirty-eight words pronounced y\u00ec<\/i> (with tone indication). Most of these \u201cwords,\u201d as pointed out in the earlier chapter on the Monosyllabic Myth, exist only in dictionaries. To apply our basic question is in error on two counts. The first is that it is methodologically incorrect to pick out of a dictionary\u2014in any language\u2014a bunch of homophonous expressions and then parade them in isolation to show how ambiguous they are. Such a procedure could also be applied to English to show that it cannot be written alphabetically. See how ambiguous \u201ccan\u201d is! On hearing it one cannot tell which of the half dozen or so homophonous words is intended\u2014actually as many as ten or more if we include the slang terms for prison, buttocks, toilet, and the like as well as the standard terms for metal container, to be able to, and so forth.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, the homophones bogeyman that is often trotted out by advocates of characters is an imaginary problem, because in reality, people generally don\u2019t talk in continuous strings of ambiguous homophones (different words that sound the same) because that would be stupid, when the goal of talking to people is generally to communicate understandably! In reality, Mandarin speakers just use sufficient context<\/a> to clarify the meanings of any homophones and get on with their lives.<\/p>\n

DeFrancis continues regarding the second way in which it is in error to question whether Mandarin, with all its homophones, can be written with an alphabet instead of with characters:<\/p>\n

\nThe second error in this approach stems from the fact that many entries in Chinese dictionaries, in general contrast to those in English, are not even words. Most of those thirty-eight entries pronounced y\u00ec<\/i> are not real words. Y\u00ec<\/i> is simply a transcription for thirty-eight characters, and characters in Chinese dictionaries are at best morphemes and at worst might mean nothing at all\u2014as in the case of the two characters \u73ca\u745a in sh\u0101nh\u00fa<\/i> (\u201ccoral\u201d) if we follow Chao and Yang (1962:140) in refusing to give separate meanings to each of the characters. To cite y\u00ec<\/i> as a problem in Chinese is therefore even more nonsensical than tearing one\u2019s hair over the problem of \u201ccan\u201d in English.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Many thus use the Monosyllabic Myth<\/a> to support the Indispensability Myth, and fall deeper into error. In contrast, as the Bible says at Proverbs 4:18<\/a>, \u201cthe path of the righteous is like the bright morning light that grows brighter and brighter until full daylight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another thing that we can note is that while many have gotten into the habit of using characters as a crutch to disambiguate Mandarin homophones (different words that sound the same), characters have the corresponding problem of homographs<\/a>,<\/em> characters that look the same, but that represent different words with different meanings and pronunciations. For example, as the MEotW post<\/a> on \u201czh\u00e1ole hu\u01d2<\/i><\/span>\n\t\t\t((zh\u00e1o\u00b7le\n\t\t\t{having caught} \u00b7 {to completion}<\/span>\n\t\t\t\u7740\u4e86\n\t\t\t\u8457\u4e86<\/span>)\n\t\t\t(hu\u01d2\n\t\t\tfire<\/span>\n\t\t\t\u706b)\n\t\t\t\u2192<\/span> [having caught fire; burning; being on fire]<\/span>)<\/span>\u201d<\/i> pointed out,<\/p>\n

\nthe characters \u201c\u7740\/\u8457\u201d can represent 5 different expressions, each with its own pronunciation and set of meanings:<\/p>\n